Drought slashes rice output

JAKARTA (JP): This year's severe drought has slashed the country's production of rice, soybeans, mung beans, cassava and sweet potatoes, but it has not affected the output of corn and peanuts.

The Central Bureau for Statistics (BPS) announced over the weekend that the country's unhusked rice production during the January-August period decreased by 4.35 percent to 38.3 million tons compared to the same period last year.

Meanwhile, the production of soybeans, according to the bureau's recent survey, declined by 6.9 percent to 1.1 million tons, mung beans by 20.2 percent to 157,000 tons, cassava by 9.9 percent to 10.3 million tons and sweet potatoes by 10.4 percent to 1.3 million tons.

However, the country's output of corn and peanuts increased by 9.2 percent and 1.7 percent respectively to 5.6 millions tons and 487,000 tons during the first eight months of this year.

The BPS said in a press release that its routine agricultural survey was based on data collected by district administrations.

The bureau noted that this year's drop in rice output resulted from the failure of crops in 148,500 hectares of rice fields which had been severely affected by this year's dry spell. The area of drought-affected fields were 248.6 percent larger than those in 1993.

It said the average productivity of rice fields in the first eight months of this year also declined by 0.06 percent to 4.3 tons per hectare over the same period of last year.

The bureau noted that Java remains the main supplier of rice to the country. Of the 38.3 million tons of the rice output, 60 percent was produced on the island.(rid)